| Bob MacDonald, a columnist for the Toronto Sun, has seen the effects of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) on his home nation of Canada, and his home town of Toronto. For obvious reasons, he has quite a bit to say about the Communist secrecy that allowed the disease to flourish, and infect hundreds, for months. CHINA'S DEADLY SILENCE By Bob MacDonald The key to good public health is publicity - alerting as many people as possible as soon as possible about a threat. And telling them the best ways to protect themselves - including the ordering of compulsory quarantines if necessary. The present SARS threat that's increasingly spreading through the world via the jet plane - including Canada and especially the Toronto area - is a classic case. The communist regime that runs China and its 1.3 billion people exerts iron-fisted control of every segment of society - including the vast country's media. Nothing is publicized without the government's okay - and that includes the "facts" as they invent them. As with most communist philosophy, everything must reflect the glorious success of the state and anything that doesn't is usually suppressed or twisted. The fact that in such regimes the lives of thousands of innocent men, women and children are threatened or lost is too often secondary to the all-important "image" of the state. In the case of SARS, the Chinese government first became aware of this communicable, life-threatening virus last November. However, it chose to keep it quiet and downplayed it even after admitting its existence by fudging the figures on the number of cases and deaths. That went on for months until mid-March when Beijing finally revealed some details of the outbreak. But that was too late to alert many people, both foreign and Chinese, who had visited various parts of China and picked up the disease. With the speed of jet airliners, some soon took the SARS virus to various parts of the world, including Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. By then, the monster was out of the bag - with SARS arriving here, where doctors and nurses had little idea of what they were dealing with and were unable to take early steps to contain it. EXPERTS WERE REFUSED ENTRY Even after medical and public health authorities in places like Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Canada and the U.S. became aware of the threat, the Chinese government repeatedly lied and covered up. They also repeatedly refused permission for the World Health Organization (WHO) to send a team of expert medical investigators to Guangdong province, the place where it's believed SARS originated. In fact, it wasn't until April 2, with the world demanding answers, that the Beijing bosses grudgingly gave permission to WHO to enter Guangdong. Just think. If the Chinese regime had acted responsibly, it could have warned the WHO and the world early on about this mysterious new disease. Quarantine measures and other prevention steps could have been taken early to alert the Chinese people and foreign visitors about the situation. Also, the world's researchers could have joined much earlier with those in China to isolate the virus and begin the job of developing vaccines and more effective treatments. But no, communist ideology and state secrecy held sway. The truth was bottled up until it started to spill over and explode into the rest of world. It reminds me of the old Soviet Union's deadly cover-up of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. In April of 1986, I noticed a small story from Stockholm, Sweden on the Sun's wire services. It said Swedish equipment had detected a large cloud of strong radiation in the air, coming in on the prevailing winds from the direction of the Soviet Union. Various media and governments inquired, but Moscow pleaded ignorance. Finally, the truth seeped out: one of the Soviet nuclear reactors at Chernobyl in Ukraine had exploded - spewing 50 tons of radioactive particles into the atmosphere. That was 10 times the fallout released by the bomb blast at Hiroshima. Trying to minimize the disaster, the Soviet bosses said only 31 deaths resulted. And yet 8,000 deaths from radiation were counted later among the 600,000 workers, including conscripts, sent in to clean up the mess. Thousands of children in the large area west of Chernobyl later developed leukemia and other illnesses. If the Kremlin had not been so hellbent to cover up and minimize the disaster, it could have speedily alerted the surrounding population, warned them to stay indoors and then quickly evacuated them. Many lives could have been saved. But that didn't happen. The "reputation" of the communist government came first, just as now is going on in China. It's a tragedy that's bad enough for China's people. But it's even worse when you realize many other people, including Canadians, have needlessly had their lives put at risk. Back to the home page. |